The medical community now recognizes a condition of unknown cause that is referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome. The role of cardiac dysfunction in this syndrome, the diagnosis and preferred treatment have not been heretofore understood or explainable. A competent diagnosis for fatigue will conventionally include a complete medical history, a physical examination and appropriate laboratory studies in order to determine whether the fatigue can be explained by other diagnoses such as arteriosclerosis or other coronary artery disease, heart muscle damage from. coronary thrombosis or other acute heart disease, or heart damage such as pericarditis, etc. Other recognizable infections or other diverse maladies may, of course, cause chronic fatigue; but, as mentioned above, this chronic fatigue syndrome has not been heretofore understood or diagnosable. Also, while some consider chronic fatigue syndrome to exist only when it persists for six months or longer, others consider this syndrome to be present when there is an unexplainable fatigue for much shorter periods of time such as one or two months.
Conventional diagnosis for heart disease includes electrocardiographic monitoring which has been done for many years such as disclosed, for example, by U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,267,934 Thornton; 3,572,321 Bloomfield et al; 3,829,766 Herz; and 4,275,742 Faisandier. Most electrocardiographic monitorings are performed on a sedentary patient; however, it is also conventional to electrocardiographically monitor an ambulatory patient such as disclosed by U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,183,354 Sibly et al; 4,457,315 Bennish; 4,546,776 Bellin et al; 4,583,553 Shah et al; and 4,883,065 Kelen.
Conventional analysis of electrocardiograms of both sedentary and ambulatory patients has recognized that heart disease can be diagnosed from a persistent abnormality in the PQRST waveform generated by the electrocardiographic monitoring. For example, when the PQRST waveform for a patient almost always has depressed ST segments or depressed T-waves, it is recognized that this is an indicator of a lack of myocardial oxygen that can result from arteriosclerosis, heart damage such as from coronary thrombosis or pericarditis. Prior art which discloses analysis of electrocardiographic data includes U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,605,727 Zenevich et al; 3,858,034 Anderson; 3,868,567 Ekstrom; 4,622,980 Kunig; 4,784,153 Marks; 4,854,327 Kunig; and 4,987,901 Kunig as well as Chest Magazine, November 1988 article by Terrence J. Montague and the commentary on this article by the inventor of the present application in analyzing T-wave depression and inversions.